People often need to establish voice and data communications with separate destinations at the same time. Prior art methods for obtaining such voice and data communication services include employing (a) Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) technology, which is an all digital technology that provides a user with two separate bearer (B) channels, each of which independently and simultaneously carries user information, so that one channel may carry voice while the other channel carries data; b) multiple "plain old telephone service" (POTS) lines; and c) data over voice modems, which carry a full POTS channel and a full data channel on a carrier frequency well above the highest POTS-channel frequency.
ISDN 1) is expensive to implement, 2) is not universally available, and 3) must be provisioned by the local exchange carrier (LEC). Multiple POTS lines are expensive and cumbersome to deal with. Each data over voice modem requires a) a dedicated modem in the central office, b) special conditioning of the local loop to the central office, and c) a limit on the loop length connecting the data over voice modem to the central office. These limitations arise because data over voice modems require additional bandwidth substantially beyond that which is available over a single POTS connection. In addition to the above-noted disadvantages, all the foregoing technologies must be provisioned for use ahead of time, resulting in their being inflexible and lacking portability. As a result, ISDN and data over voice service are not widely available.
Another prior art technology for providing a user with simultaneous voice and data communication service is employed in SVD modems. SVD modems are modems for use in providing simultaneous voice and data service within the bandwidth provided by a single POTS connection, i.e., a bandwidth of approximately 3200 hertz. Present SVD modems typically can provide a telephone quality voice channel and a data channel of up to 4800 bits per second simultaneously. Should the data channel not be in use, the quality of the voice channel is increased slightly. Similarly, if the voice channel is not in use, the speed of the data channel can be increased to 14.4 Kbits per second. (For a detailed description of exemplary technology used in SVD modems see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/076,505 filed Jun. 14, 1993 and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention.) One exemplary, commercially available SVD modem is the AT&T DataPort.RTM. 2001 modem. It is anticipated that future SVD modems will be more efficient, permitting an even higher ram of data transmission while the voice channel is in use.
Because SVD modems communicate over a single POTS channel, they can be attached to the large number of POTS subscriber telephone lines without any advanced provisioning. However, at present, SVD modems can only be used to provide point-to-point simultaneous voice and data service where the parties at each end of the POTS connection have an SVD modem, thereby limiting their usefulness.